Tips

May 9, 2024

What is Product Stickiness? Full Guide With Examples

Discover what product stickiness is, why it's crucial for SaaS growth, and how to boost it. Learn tips, see real-world examples, and explore how Eppo helps.

Anne Kim

Have you ever wondered why some products effortlessly integrate into users' lives, while others quickly fade into obscurity?

The answer lies in product stickiness — a crucial metric that measures a product's ability to promote frequent usage and cultivate customer loyalty.

In this guide, we’ll delve into some key strategies to boost product stickiness and illustrate their effectiveness with some real-world examples.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

What is product stickiness?
Why should you measure it?
What is a good stickiness ratio?
Some tips to boost your product’s stickiness
Some real-life sticky product examples
Frequently asked questions about product stickiness
How Eppo can help you make your products stickier

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What is product stickiness?

Product stickiness refers to how dedicated and loyal users are to a product over time. The stickier the product, the more indispensable it becomes to users.

Think of it this way: As a product user, have you ever found yourself constantly coming back to an app or website? Maybe it's a social media platform where you connect with friends, a productivity tool that streamlines your work, or even a game that provides hours of entertainment. If so, then that product has stickiness.

For companies, product stickiness is crucial. It means higher customer retention, more opportunities for account expansion, and greater lifetime value. The end goal is to create a product that becomes an everyday habit and part of users’ routines.

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Why should you measure product stickiness?

Product stickiness isn't just any metric — it's a window into the very health of your SaaS product. By tracking it, you gain valuable knowledge to drive growth. Here are eight reasons why measuring your product stickiness is so important:

Uncover the 'why' behind user behavior: Is your stickiness declining? It flags that your product may be losing its value proposition for customers. Perhaps it’s time to optimize onboarding, make valuable features more discoverable, or even reevaluate the core problem your SaaS solves.
Make data-driven decisions: Prioritize features and updates that directly contribute to increased stickiness. This means identifying the features that drive daily usage and addressing pain points causing conflict.
Increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Sticky users are your most loyal and valuable customers. Due to their high engagement and low churn rates, they are primed for upgrades, add-ons, and even becoming brand ambassadors through referrals or positive reviews.
Eliminate hidden friction: Pinpoint the snag points in your experience. Is your onboarding confusing? Are powerful features well hidden? Identifying and smoothing out these friction points eliminates obstacles to adoption.
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Validate your product assumptions: You built your product on a specific hypothesis about user needs. Stickiness metrics reveal whether your assumptions hold true. Couple this with user engagement data, and you’ll assess your product’s situation accurately.
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Track the impact of changes: Every product evolves. Whether you're rolling out major updates or incremental tweaks, stickiness metrics are your early warning system. If a change causes a sudden decline in usage, it flags a potential problem. Conversely, seeing stickiness improve validates that your changes were well-received.
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Identify "at-risk" user segments: By tracking stickiness across your user base you can uncover specific groups struggling to find value. This lets you provide targeted support or refine your messaging to keep them engaged.
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Benchmark against your growth goals: Stickiness is vital for sustainable SaaS growth. If your goal is to rapidly expand your user base, a high stickiness score indicates that your current users are finding value and are likely to stay. This makes scaling and acquisition efforts more fruitful in the long run.

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How do you measure product stickiness?

The core metric you should follow to measure stickiness is actually pretty simple. It's called the DAU/MAU ratio:

DAU: Daily Active Users (how many people use your product on a given day)
MAU: Monthly Active Users (how many people use it within a month)

Divide your DAU by your MAU, turn it into a percentage, and there's your stickiness score.

Here’s the formula: Stickiness Score (%) = (DAU / MAU) * 100

For example: If 2,000 people used your product today, and 10,000 used it this month, your stickiness is 20%.

The DAU/MAU ratio is a powerful starting point, but it won't tell the whole story. Here are some other things to consider:

Metrics for different usage patterns: Does your product get used every day, or more like once a week? If it's less frequent, you might want to track WAU/MAU (weekly vs. monthly usage) or even MAU/QAU (quarterly).
Lness: This tells you how often people come back in a set period. For example, "L20/30" means the percentage of users who visited at least 20 times in a month. It's a powerful way to see how sticky your product is over time.
Open rate: This is especially useful for newer products. It's the percentage of people who actually start using your product after installing it.

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What is a good stickiness ratio?

The truth is, there's no universal "perfect" stickiness score. What's considered good depends on your industry, the type of product you have, and even its stage in the product lifecycle. However, let's get some benchmarks to give you an idea.

In SaaS, a stickiness ratio of around 13% is considered average. This means users generally log in about four days out of every month. If you're hitting 20% or higher, you're doing well across most industries, and exceeding 25% is considered excellent.

B2C apps tend to have a higher DAU/MAU ratio of around 20% to 50%, especially if they are social apps such as Instagram or TikTok.

But here's the thing: Think about how your product is designed to be used. Is it a daily necessity, or is weekly or even monthly engagement more realistic? That changes your idea of what "good" looks like.

Pro tips:

When comparing your product's stickiness, look for other offerings in your specific niche for the most accurate picture.
Track your stickiness over time. Are you seeing an upward trend, even if the initial number seems low? That's a great indicator.
Stickiness is important, but it's just one piece of the puzzle. Combine it with other metrics, like customer satisfaction and churn rates, to get a full picture of your product's health.

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How to boost your product's stickiness

Here are a few actionable tips you can implement to boost your product’s stickiness:

Streamline your signup process: Remove any unnecessary steps or information requests that might cause friction. Offer quick ways to sign up, like social login options.
Personalize the onboarding experience: Use a welcome screen to collect key information about your users (e.g., their job role, goals) and tailor their initial journey within your product.
Fast-track users to their "Aha!" moment: Design your onboarding to quickly guide users to the core value proposition of your product. Use interactive walkthroughs for hands-on learning.
Promote feature discovery throughout the user journey: Don't just rely on initial onboarding. Employ in-app tooltips and modals contextually to highlight valuable (but potentially under-used) features when relevant.
Time your upsell offers strategically: Focus on providing value first. When you do promote upgrades, ensure you're highlighting how those premium features solve a specific pain point for the user or enhance their existing experience.
Collect user feedback proactively: Use in-app micro-surveys to gather insights on specific features or pain points. Conduct regular customer satisfaction surveys (CSAT, NPS, etc.) to track overall sentiment and identify areas for improvement.

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3 super sticky product examples

Spotify

Spotify masters the art of user stickiness. It starts with a smooth onboarding process that gets users listening to music they'll enjoy right away. Spotify's strength lies in its hyper-personalized recommendations.

Playlists like "Discover Weekly" continuously surprise users with new music tailored to their tastes, keeping them returning for more every week.

Throw in social features like shared playlists, and a huge library of songs and podcasts, and it becomes clear why Spotify feels like an irreplaceable part of many users' daily lives.

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Slack

Slack's stickiness comes from its ability to replace the jumble of communication tools in the modern workplace. New users are on boarded quickly, and guided towards channels and conversations that match their needs.

Beyond simple chat, Slack's platform thrives on integrations. It pulls in notifications and updates from countless other apps — think project management, sales tools, even social media.

This transforms Slack into the central command center of the workday. Plus, with built-in social features, Slack fosters a sense of team camaraderie that many traditional work tools lack.

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Duolingo

Duolingo's success lies in making learning feel like a game. Instead of overwhelming new users, it starts with bite-sized lessons, focusing on the basics. Rewards abound — virtual currency, streaks for daily practice, and progress through increasingly challenging levels. This gamification taps into our desire for achievement and creates a sense of momentum.

Duolingo also understands that motivation ebbs and flows. Daily reminders gently nudge users back toward practice while its mascot, Duo the owl, offers a mix of encouragement and playful guilt trips. The result? A product that feels less like work and more like a rewarding habit.

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Frequently asked questions

What is product stickiness vs retention?

Product stickiness refers to a product's inherent ability to compel users to return regularly due to its value, while retention focuses on the company's strategies to actively encourage customers to return.

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How do you calculate product stickiness?

The core metric for calculating product stickiness is the DAU/MAU ratio. This is calculated by dividing your Daily Active Users (DAU) by your Monthly Active Users (MAU). The result is a percentage representing how many of your monthly users engage with your product daily.

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What does stickiness mean in analytics?

In analytics, stickiness refers to how frequently and consistently users return to and engage with a product.

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What is the difference between stickiness and loyalty?

Stickiness refers to frequent engagement and habit-forming behavior in the short term. Loyalty means customers continue to use your product over the long run, often due to brand affinity or satisfaction.

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Making it stick with Eppo

Now that you understand what product stickiness is and why it's so important, how can you actually measure and improve it to boost your SaaS revenue?

That’s where Eppo comes in.

Eppo is a powerful experimentation and feature management platform designed to help SaaS companies find what’s behind their user behavior.

With Eppo, you can:

Pinpoint friction with granular event tracking: Eppo tracks every user interaction, from button clicks to feature usage. This lets you see where users hesitate, get confused, or drop off, revealing potential roadblocks to product adoption.
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Visualize user journeys for actionable insights: Eppo's journey mapping tools show you the most common paths users take. This highlights features that drive engagement (and those that don't), making it easier to optimize for smoother, more rewarding experiences.
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Segment users to understand stickiness drivers: Analyze stickiness by user demographics, acquisition channels, feature usage, and more. This helps you identify which user groups are most loyal — and what makes them stick around.
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A/B test to boost stickiness: Eppo lets you experiment with different experiences. Measure how onboarding changes, in-app guidance, or feature rollouts affect your DAU/MAU ratio and other stickiness metrics.

By taking all of this into account, Eppo lets you make an accurate forecast of your product’s stickiness with data and clear insights you can trust.

‍Book a Demo and Explore Eppo.